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Will we follow Doge City's lead
Published 12/8/2007 in News : Education By Emily Behlmann
Will we follow Dodge City's lead?
Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series examining how other Kansas school districts have dealt with overcrowding at their high schools, as USD 457 considers options for handling the same concern. A Dec. 15 story will look at districts that have added a second high school.
By EMILY BEHLMANN
ebehlmann@gctelegram.com
DODGE CITY— Crowded hallways, overflowing parking lots and no room for expansion—it all might sound familiar to residents who have been following USD 457 discussions of Garden City High School.
But it's all deja vu to those in neighboring Dodge City, 50 miles to the east.
Ten years ago, the old Dodge City High School, 70 years old at the time, was packed to the brim. The initial building had capacity for 800, and students were overflowing into a technical center across the street. But the 1,400 enrollment still was just too much, said Superintendent Alan Cunningham, who then was assistant superintendent for curriculum.
Today, Dodge City students walk into a brightly lit, seven-year-old building with a wide central hallway, separate wings for each grade level, a sports arena, vocational building and performing arts center.
The road was long. It took intensive research and several failed attempts, but finally, on May 2, 1998, the school district passed the $45.5 million bond issue that gave the Dodge City Red Demons a new home.
Common ground
As two of three corners, besides Liberal, of what some have dubbed the 'golden triangle' of southwest Kansas cities, Garden City and Dodge City are quite similar.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Garden City's 2006 population at 27,175 and Dodge City's at 26,101. Both cities have a sizable percentage of low-income residents. At school, 60.69 percent of Garden City students and 71.42 percent of Dodge City students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
School enrollment is higher in Garden City, which pulls from a majority of Finney County. This year, 7,311 students are enrolled, with 1,906 at the high school.
Dodge City USD 443's enrollment last year was 5,927, with 1,692 at the high school, according to the Kansas State Department of Education. That's up 673 overall students, including 256 high schoolers, from the year of the bond issue, and Cunningham said increases have been continuous.
The growth led to a crowded high school, much like what Garden City staff and community members have discussed for the past several months. At GCHS, hallways are too narrow, classrooms too full, restrooms too few and parking too sparse, GCHS administrators say.
Needing something new
Despite the similarities in population, demographics and space needs, comparing the conditions of the former Dodge City High School and the current Garden City High School isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.
GCHS, opened in 1954, has been well maintained, administrators have said at meetings about the facility. The district has invested more than $10 million in 11 additions and remodels, including construction of Clifford Hope Auditorium, Memorial Stadium and J.D. Adams Hall.
The old Dodge City High School had more dire needs, according to several district sources, including Cindy Day, one of three co-chairs of the citizens' bond election committee.
Day said convincing some skeptics of the need for a new school only required showing them the old photographs in which students pulled up on horses and buggies—at the same building educators were struggling to equip with computers and other technology.
'The old building, as it stood, was a dinosaur,' Day said.
With the age and poor condition of DCHS as motivators, Day and others sat down to figure out what to do.
Adding on was out of the question—The building was land-locked and even the addition of a technical building required about 1,000 students to cross the busy Comanche Street every day, Cunningham said. Student parking was nonexistent, so teens' cars lined the curbs for several blocks in all directions, he said.
He said the district considered other ideas, including splitting Dodge City's students among two high schools.
Back in Garden City, the USD 457 Board of Education is thinking about the same thing, though previous bond issues to fund a second Garden City high school failed in 1998 and 2000.
For Dodge City, leaders of the research committee also saw little support for a second high school, Cunningham said. A survey showed concerns that the plan would divide the community, and that the two wouldn't be equitable.
'We heard loud and clear that we were better off a one-high-school community,' Cunningham said.
Getting it passed
With the decision to propose what turned out to be a bond issue for a $35.5 million high school in Dodge City—plus the $8 million refurbishment of the old school into a fifth/sixth-grade center and $2 million in elementary upgrades—a group of supporters got to work.
Cunningham said he thinks the key factor in the bond issue's success was the market research a hired firm completed on citizens' desires and the threshold of what they could afford.
Bond planners hadn't intended, for instance, to include an athletic arena, because games were played at the civic center. But the arena and a performing arts center also added at DCHS were top on residents' lists, he said.
'Find out what's important to the community,' he said. 'It's to the advantage of the students to do it that way.
Garden City officials seem aware of this. The USD 457 Board of Education will consider Monday night whether to hire DeSieghardt Strategic Communications LLC to conduct a similar survey.
When plans were in place in Dodge City, Day was a leader of a group of about 60 community members who versed themselves in every question about the bond issue. The fact that the supporters were from all facets of the community was integral to the bond issue's success, she said.
Looking back,'moving forward
Not everyone was pleased with the results in Dodge City.
Ralph Spencer, leader of a Dodge City group that called itself Committee for Concerned Taxpayers, said he thought the district could have developed a better plan.
An addition to the old school would have been feasible by buying a few houses, or a new school could be more centrally located so students could walk or use less gas driving, he said.
The new school was built on about one-fourth of a plot of land north of the city. Spencer now advises Garden City school leaders to think carefully about the location of a new school.'
However, several others in the district, like senior Denton Durler, generally are positive about the new Dodge City High School. Durler said he likes the way students are separated by grade level into wings for many classes, but mix in the center for electives and lunch.
The design gives the 'feel' of four small schools within a larger building, Cunningham said, though he acknowledged an ideal high school would have a lower enrollment.
Cunningham said if the district had it to do over again, it probably would add more classrooms, as there already are several teachers who have to share because of rising enrollment.
However, he and others have few regrets.
'Every time I go there, for basketball games or whatever, I'm so proud of what the community did,' Day said.
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